VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Mar. 2 - Lawmakers throughout Southeast Asia on Tuesday called upon the Myanmar military to promptly stop their campaign of arrests, unconditionally release all current detainees, and abstain from using violent means in handling peaceful protesters.

"The scale of arrests since the coup gives you a clear indication of where the military junta is taking the country: a place with no space for critics or any political opposition to exist," Mu Sochua, a board member of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) and former Cambodian Member of Parliament (MP), noted in a statement received in Jakarta, Tuesday.

"All regional and international actors must get this clear: there can be no way out of the current situation without all those arbitrarily arrested being released.” Mu Sochua affirmed.

According to rights organization Assistance for Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), in merely four weeks, at least 913 individuals, including politicians, members of the previous Union Election Commission (UEC), civil servants, human rights activists, and students, were arrested and kept in detention or have outstanding arrest warrants against them.

The AAPP also estimates that some 30 individuals lost their lives in the violent crackdown by Myanmar’s security forces on peaceful protesters.

Of those arrested and detained, at least 59 are elected representatives of the Union and local parliaments comprising the state counsellor, president and vice president, speaker and deputy speaker of Parliament, chief ministers, and Union and regional-level MPs.

Most are placed in detention at unknown locations, without charge or access to their lawyers. Some are detained in military barracks, such as tactical command centers.

"Most of those detained have not been charged and have neither seen a lawyer nor their families in about a month. Those people are at risk. Being out of sight is where torture and ill-treatment can happen, and we all know this is not foreign to Myanmar’s jails," Mu Sochua cautioned.

In the few cases where they have been charged, the laws used against the MPs include: Section 505(b) of the Penal Code (publication or sharing of statements with intent to cause fear or alarm to the public), Section 25 of the Natural Disaster Management Law (causing a disaster through any negligent or willful act), Section 8 of the Export and Import Law (exporting or importing prohibited goods), and Section 67 of the Telecommunications Law (for possessing or using telecommunication equipment that requires a license).

Furthermore, the junta has been threatening and harassing members of the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH).

The Committee members took an oath days after the coup and have vowed to continue to fulfill their mandate as representatives of the people.

On February 26, the new military-appointed UEC declared that it is illegal to form committees representing parliaments and threatened to take legal action against those doing so.

At least 21 elected representatives, including 17 members of the CRPH, are currently in hiding after finding out about arrest warrants being issued against them under Section 505(a) or (b) of the Penal Code and/or the Natural Disaster Management Law.

The APHR alleges that by imprisoning and harassing elected representatives, who are purely exercising the mandate of the public, the military is trying to muffle the people’s voices and rob them of their choices.

"We call on all parliamentarians worldwide to act in solidarity with Myanmar and use their position within and outside the parliament to call for all those arbitrarily detained to be immediately released and to work for the restoration of democracy in Myanmar. Let us make sure that our colleagues sit in parliament and not in jail," Mu Sochua emphasized. (Antaranews)

Mar. 2 - A total of 1,720,523 Indonesians have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or an increase of 28,799 people as of March 1, 2021, with the provision of the first dose of vaccine.

Based on data from the COVID-19 Handling Task Force received in Jakarta, Monday, of the 1,720,523 people, a total of 1,002,218 people have been given the second dose of vaccine, or an increase of 3,779 people as of March 1, 2021.

The Indonesian government has determined that as many as 181,554,465 of the total population of Indonesia will be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Meanwhile, the government is targeting as many as 1,468,764 health workers to receive COVID-19 vaccinations.

Apart from health workers, the government has also started giving vaccines to other groups including religious leaders, public service officials, journalists, street vendors, and traders in traditional markets.

The Indonesian government is targeting 70 percent of Indonesia's population to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in order to create herd immunity in the country.

Immunity of individuals and groups is important in order to provide protection from infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 and to reduce the rate of transmission of COVID-19.

In the current vaccine administration, one person needs two doses of vaccine, so if the target of vaccination is nearly 181.6 million Indonesians, then around 363 million vaccine shots are needed. (Antaranews)

Mar. 2 -  The new chief of the World Trade Organization (WTO) urged its member states on Monday to work with pharmaceutical companies to license more COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing in developing countries in order to triple global production.

“People are dying in poor countries,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said on her first day in office. “The world has a normal capacity of production of 3.5 billion doses of vaccines and we now seek to manufacture 10 billion doses.”

Her call comes as a group of developing countries led by South Africa and India seek to waive intellectual property rights for COVID-19 drugs and vaccines, a move opposed by the United States, the European Union and other wealthy nations.

Okonjo-Iweala, the WTO’s first female and first African director-general, said that, while this debate continued, companies must be encouraged to open up and license more viable manufacturing sites now in developing countries.

In a speech to the WTO’s 164 member states, she said there was an upcoming world manufacturing convention and urged the start of dialogue with manufacturers associations.

After a long campaign that was derailed in the latter stages by a Trump administration veto, the 66-year-old Nigerian was confirmed as boss last month, pledging to “forget business as usual” at the WTO, which is struggling to strike new deals and whose arbitration functions are paralysed.

“READY TO GO”

“It feels great. I am coming into one of the most important institutions in the world and we have a lot of work to do. I feel ready to go,” Okonjo-Iweala told a reporter on arrival at the WTO’s lakeside Geneva headquarters where she donned a mask and elbow-bumped officials.

The former Nigerian finance and foreign minister aims to revive the global trade watchdog ahead of a major year-end meeting, saying she feared the world was leaving the WTO behind.

WTO delegates agreed to hold the next major ministerial conference in Geneva from Nov. 29.

The meeting was originally due to be held in Kazakhstan in 2020 but was delayed due to the pandemic. Okonjo-Iweala has said she hopes ministers at the year-end meeting can finalise deals on ending fisheries subsidies and reforms for the WTO’s top appeals body which was paralysed by the Trump administration.

Since the WTO director-general holds few executive powers, some analysts question her ability to revive the body in the face of so many challenges, including persistent U.S.-China trade tensions and growing protectionism heightened by the pandemic. (Reuters)

Mar. 2 - Russia launched its space satellite Arktika-M on Sunday on a mission to monitor the climate and environment in the Arctic amid a push by the Kremlin to expand the country’s activities in the region.

The Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the global average over the last three decades and Moscow is seeking to develop the energy-rich region, investing in the Northern Sea Route for shipping across its long northern flank as ice melts.

The satellite successfully reached its intended orbit after being launched from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur cosmodrome by a Soyuz rocket, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, said in a post on Twitter.

Russia plans to send up a second satellite in 2023 and, combined, the two will offer round-the-clock, all-weather monitoring of the Arctic Ocean and the surface of the Earth, Roscosmos said.

The Arktika-M will have a highly elliptical orbit that passes high over northern latitudes allowing it to monitor northern regions for lengthy periods before it loops back down under Earth.

At the right orbit, the satellite will be able to monitor and take images every 15-30 minutes of the Arctic, which can’t be continuously observed by satellites that orbit above the Earth’s equator, Roscosmos said.

The satellite will also be able to retransmit distress signals from ships, aircraft or people in remote areas as part of the international Cospas-Sarsat satellite-based search and rescue programme, Roscosmos said.

“As more activity takes place in the Arctic and as it moves into higher latitudes, improving weather and ice forecasting abilities is crucial,” said Mia Bennett, a geographer at the University of Hong Kong.

“There is also an element of data nationalism that is feeding into all this. Countries, especially those that see themselves as space powers, want to be able to rely on their own satellites and data to inform their activities, whether commercial or military in nature,” she said. (Reuters)